The present invention relates generally to the field of medical monitoring and more specifically to the field of storage of data, such as waveforms or other physiological data representations, acquired during medical monitoring or diagnostic testing. In particular, the present invention relates to the generation of a set of high-resolution characters representative of a set of physiological data and to the reconstruction of a set of physiological data from such a set of high-resolution characters.
Electrocardiograph (ECG) systems measure cardiac electrical activity associated with the muscular pumping activity of the heart. The electrical activity is measured by contacts or leads placed on the body of the patient. Typically, the measured electrical activity may then be printed out as an ECG waveform or trace for review by a doctor or diagnostician.
In hospitals, added functionality and workflow integration may be provided by digital ECG systems that acquire and store the ECG data in a digital format. The digital ECG data may be stored on various magnetic or optical devices, may be transmitted to one or more display stations remote from the patient, and may be printed once or numerous times from the stored record. The digital ECG data, therefore, provides a degree of flexibility, security, and reproducibility that may not be easily obtained from non-digital ECG system that produce only a paper record of the ECG waveform or trace.
Despite the benefits of digital ECG, certain vulnerabilities may be created for hospitals using the digital technology. For example, digital records may be accidentally deleted, corrupted, or destroyed. Similarly, the accessible nature of digital records may create security or privacy concerns in the absence of a suitable controlled access implementation. Furthermore, paper savings, i.e., paperless ECG, may not be realized due to advantages of paper printouts, such as superior resolution, ease of side-by-side comparison, convenience, and so forth. As a result, even in hospitals utilizing digital ECG, the actual implementation may be a combination of digital acquisition and storage with analog printouts remaining the primary presentation of the ECG data to the physician.
Furthermore, outside of the hospital setting, digital ECG is not widespread, with paper ECG printouts remaining the primary or only record of a set of ECG data. For example, ECG data may be collected during physical exams or clinical testing, such as at doctor's offices, universities, clinics, and so forth, where the workflow or limited nature of the facility does not justify the use of a digital ECG system. As a result, the ECG data collected may never be converted into a digital format or entered into a database or other shared or archival system. Furthermore, the paper ECG printout may be lost, damaged, or destroyed with no way to recover or replace the ECG data acquired at that point in time. The present may be directed to one or more of the problems set forth above.